Ideal positioning recommendation

From the South Tyrolean mountains to the conquest of the Spanish market.

One of the major apple producing regions in Europe is on the southern slopes of the Alps, in South Tyrol. From here, various brands such as Val Venosta, Melinda, Marlene… and others were sold. They enjoy a good climate and an ideal environment for high quality apple growing, as shown by their flavour. And they have all begun to conquer new markets short on apples, such as in Spain. In addition, through their promotional and advertising campaigns, they have managed to emphasis the value of their origin and flavour.

This coincidence in positioning shared by several brands was preventing Marlene from being suitably differentiated.

Searching for a real differentiation for greater value.

From the start, the positioning of Marlene transmitted in its campaign claim that they came with “Flavour as pure as their origin”, a value that was shared by the rest of the brands produced in the region. After a personal visit to the Marlene production area in which the AGR Food Marketing team had the chance to see how Marlene was produced and what competitors were doing, we found clear-cut unique values possessed by the brand that would differentiate it from its competitors, and which we thought would be valued by consumers.

This is how we laid the foundations for the current positioning of the Marlene brand. Marlene producers (VOG) grew many more varieties than their competitors did. And this fact, together with the realisation that retailers valued using the same apple supplier for all their various needs for high quality products, and that end consumers are quite heterogeneous in their tastes and preferences in apples, gave us an “easy” solution: VARIETY was the strong point on which we had to build a new, differentiated and highly competitive positioning vis-à-vis other brands from the same area.

Even with this, we went one step further when we saw that variety – a rational concept – was also complemented by SAFETY in the eyes of the consumer – an emotional concept – and this is why we added to our strategy the following: “with Marlene, thanks to its variety, you can always safely find the apple that best suits your needs.”

This approach helped us in creating the new advertising campaign claim used by Marlene in the last few years: Viva la Variedad (“Long live variety”).